Houston Police Department

The Houston Police Department has a crime laboratory whereby rulings in cases still working their way through the courts suggest that the death sentences of at least three Texas inmates could have been based on faulty work by HPDs ballistics division in the fall of 2005.129 The latest decision granted a new trial for one inmate citing serious questions about the accuracy of HPD analysts work. Other judicial rulings also have prompted concerns about other cases. The police department is expected to hire a special investigator to review the work of all divisions of its crime lab. However, one Houston lawyer representing inmates says ballistics cases should also receive special scrutinylike the DNA lab, where the discovery of poor working conditions and shoddy science forced the retesting of evidence in almost 400 cases. What would you do to aid the officers who processed the investigations of these cases and made the arrests?